Tuesday, January 26, 2010

New work for the show Smoke + Mirrors/Shadows + Fog at the Hunter College Times Square Gallery, February 18 - April 17, 2010.

(Getting better images at the photographer tomorrow). Its been interesting to make work in a short space of time - the usual frenzy of experiments, high points, dips, despair and determination ... leading to work that holds its own and takes me forward. The way that chance and intention work together is really interesting.

3 new works this size (framed to 36 x 36 inches) and 6 smaller works are heading up to NYC via UPS next week, along with the raw materials for a 10 foot floor drawing. Can't imagine explaining to Airport Security why I have 20 lbs of granular ilmenite along with assorted oven elements and plastic trash is in my hand luggage...!

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Its been a busy Fall... teaching seemed to take a lot of time for some reason this semester. Mind you, 2 trips to NYC along with continual promotional work like updating artist registries, sending out submissions etc as well as putting on this show took up the slack!

This show at the Asheville Area Arts Council Gallery in downtown Asheville was a fabulous opportunity, as exhibiting at best always is, to move some ideas forward. The gallery has two basement rooms that are not really used for anything. I'd applied like a year ago, and been accepted for the upstairs gallery. Then during the year I happened to see the basement rooms... and knew I had to put my installations in there. Luckily Sarah Meyer at the gallery was keen, and let me have a free hand.It took a little figuring out, but a couple of weeks saw me placing work, installing lights, building an 8.5 x 17 foot canvas on site and fixing it up as a partition (that was a trip with only two pairs of hands!). The rooms are unfinished, with ducting and all kinds of cabling and pipes exposed in the ceiling, the walls are tidy and white, but just whatever happens to be there - corrugated brick, the tracks of old staircases etc. The coolest feature was the water heater on its little pile of bricks... instead of covering it up it became part of the installation on the suggestion of my artist friend Nava Lubelski. A little shadow drawing all of its own. Nava also helped me with the large canvas, and with painting the ladder shadow - an idea that got its chance at the last minute and was not yet dry as wine began flowing on the opening night!

So, the work that came together in January at Warren Wilson College looked very different in these more industrial surroundings, and was put in context with both new and older work. For a fuller view of the show, check out http://heatherlewis.carbonmade.com . (There's a link to that from my main website too, on the links page. Updating is an issue when your web designer knows php programming and you don't!)

AND the good news is, the promotional activity paid off! I have been invited to show work at Hunter College Times Square Gallery, CUNY in New York in February!

Drawing (oven ring)

My websites/blogs

About Me

Growing up in a hot climate next a large oil refinery contrasted with later life in Scotland where winters brought early darkness and rain. Working as a production potter introduced small scale manufacturing and the commercial world. Then I obtained a BFA and MFA, graduating fully in 2000.
As an artist my interest in industry is exploratory and abstract, fueling current research.